Review: 'The Madwoman Upstairs,' by Catherine Lowell

Like generations of young girls, I read Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" and sister Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" and fell in love with Jane's Mr. Rochester and Cathy's Heathcliff. So, with great anticipation, I began reading debut novelist Catherine Lowell's "The Madwoman Upstairs," whose title refers to Bertha Mason, the crazed wife whom Mr. Rochester kept hidden in his attic. It's also a nod to the book's brooding protagonist, who resides in a tower room at the University of Oxford.

Lowell delivers a smart, clever and properly Gothic novel about American Samantha Whipple, who at 20 is the only surviving relative of Patrick Brontë, the father of Charlotte, Emily, Anne and, of course, their bad boy brother, Branwell.

"The Madwoman Upstairs" takes place mostly in modern-day Oxford, where Samantha is studying literature.

Employing her vast knowledge of the works of the Brontë sisters and her superb storytelling skills, Lowell creates in Samantha a woman as lonely and alone in the world as Jane Eyre.

As long as Samantha can remember, literary scholars have stirred the pot of rumors about a missing "Vast Brontë Estate" that, if it were found, would belong to Samantha. She knows of no newly discovered artifacts linked to the Brontës and is perplexed by her dead father's will, which bequeathed her something called the "Warnings of Experience."

If you are a Brontë scholar, you may know about the "Warnings." For the rest of us, this highly engaging novel is a treasure hunt wrapped in Lowell's mastery of the Brontës' history and the books they wrote.

As if in perfect harmony with Jane Eyre, Samantha falls in love with an older, secretive man, James Timothy Orville III, her professor of 19th-century British literature. He's as dark and mysterious as Mr. Rochester and proves worthy of the comparison as this novel's plot rolls out.

Among the joys of this book — and there are many — are the discussions Samantha has with herself and with James about the Brontë canon, particularly "Jane Eyre," "Wuthering Heights" and, surprisingly and delightfully, the lesser works of Anne Brontë, "Agnes Grey" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall."

Lowell mines these books as well as her imagination to build an atmospheric plot that has Samantha seeking clues to the meaning and location of the "Warnings" and the identification of the perpetrators of some strange goings-on on campus.

Deftly, Lowell combines a rollicking treasure hunt with a wickedly dark story of what it means to feel alone in the world.

It's Lowell's voice of authenticity in all matters Brontë that empowers "The Madwoman Upstairs." She does such a magnificent job evoking the sisters' lives and writings that, like me, you may pluck that dusty copy of "Jane Eyre" off the bookshelf and begin falling in love with Mr. Rochester all over again.

Carol Memmott also reviews books for the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune.